


Flours and Rage

by handschuhmaus



Series: Small Sith In The Kitchen [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Caar is not a particularly competent parent, Cooking, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Hego Damask is a weave structures geek, I have no idea where this came from, Kid Fic, Recipe translation, Sith, Sith cooking, Sith family, but yet fairly well intentioned, cuteness, even at this age, little Hego is slightly mischievous, metric vs. imperial (measurements), probably not wholly canon compliant, silliness, slightly too late for pileofsith's contest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By various appearances, it would seem that Caar Damask's small son is up to no good. Why else would he be in the kitchen, quiet, with a funny smell wafting from the oven?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _I dearly regret doing this but due to some minor computer problems and some issues at present with my internet connection, despite my having set this up as a draft in hopes of giving myself a deadline, uploading the story text (I do have quite a bit of it written!) would presently present difficulties. I don't really want to have to do the tags and summary and what not (insubstantial as they may be) over again, however, so right now this story contains a small unintended teaser prologue drabble taking place at a much later date. Rest assured that when these things are resolved and I can put it up in its entireity, I do intend to make this story available for all to read, not just registered users_

Caar nodded. "Yes, as I recall, you were trying to recreate some sort of biscuits your mother had become particularly fond of."

"Was I?" Hego, who actually remembered the incident in perfect clarity, inquired innocently.

"You made a dreadful mess of the kitchen and made the droid set off the fire alarm and procure a number of strange ingredients." Caar accused, knowing full well that he was not being quite reasonable in expecting his now nearly adult son to be held responsible for the follies of his childhood.

Privately Hego considered that the ingredients hadn't been _that_ strange, but what he said aloud was "Ah, but I was not doing the actual cooking; the droid was."

"Under your commands. Ergo you were quite guilty," the elder Damask insisted, allowing himself to get far more ruffled about the events of the past than he should have let himself.

"I see," Hego replied, with utter calm, looking carefully away from his father and instead at the patterning of the office carpet. He did not entirely care to acknowledge it as a learning experience, unworthy of a reputable Muun as lessons about recipe translation and conversion of recipe quantities were, but it had been rather revealing regarding both his father's personality and ways to deal with unanticipated difficulties...


	2. What Happened in the Damask kitchen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And this is the story proper... or at least the first installment of it.

It was much too silent in their quarters. Or at least that was Caar Damask's reasoning. He wasn't really used to being alone at home with his son and the serving droids, but he was quite certain small Muuns were meant to be noisy. His other children were noisy. He supposed even he must have been noisy as a child, though he really couldn't say. And Hego most certainly was not being noisy just now. Unless, of course, he had left the house. That would be most inconvenient and decidedly disobedient of the child; he was certain Hego's mother had rules against his leaving the house without permission--not that Caar had ever bothered about it before. The last time he was alone with Hego, the child had not been sufficiently ambulatory to leave the house without assistance. 

Where _was_ Hego?

The banker concentrated carefully, reaching out tentatively in what the Jedi called the Force to see if he could get a sense of where Hego was. And he succeeded. His son was in the kitchen.

The _kitchen._ Caar hadn't been in the kitchen since... well, he probably hadn't ever been in the kitchen. That was the realm of serving droids. It did probably explain why he couldn't hear anything of the boy; the kitchen was underground and isolated from the parlor where Caar had been working. But for the life of him he hadn't the faintest idea of what Hego would be doing in the kitchen. 

_Calm down, Caar. I'm fairly certain good parents do not panic so._ he told himself.

After thinking for a moment, he hit on the idea of blindly following the faint glow of his small son's Force presense to lead him to his entirely unknown kitchen. Unfortunately, the operative word here was blindly, and the elegantly attired Muun was concentrating so hard on things that couldn't be seen with his eyes that he failed to notice a bend in the corridor and walked into the wall, hitting his head on a completely ridiculous light fixture. Why was there a light fixture at head height in the hall where just anyone could run into it? 

He had forgotten momentarily that he himself was the tallest person in the house and thus the only one likely to be so injured, and that he had just walked into the wall blindly, which most people would not do.

Finally he found his way to the open archway from which a soft yellow glow emanated, indicating the location of his house's kitchen. Caar blinked at the scene before him and suddenly sniffed, realizing that there was a strange smell in the air. He couldn't place it, but it must have been fairly strong for him to smell it because he had a particularly bad sense of smell. 

But enough of worrying about smells; it didn't smell _bad_ after all, just odd. What had first come to his attention was that Hego was perched on a barstool at the prep counter and the small Muun was bent over some sort of strange pictographic chart, at intervals filling in a square in the main part of the grid. Caar understood financial charts, almost exclusively, and he didn't understand this one. There were only small numbers on it, in strange arrangements, no numbers large enough to indicate quantities of money, and no symbols he could understand, just filled in squares. 

The small Muun tilted his head and examined the datasheet again, a frown of consternation coming unsettlingly to his young face. Irritably he dragged the stylus across the row again, clearing the squares anew. Caar really didn't think it was a sort of puzzle that was a worthy use of the boy's time. 

Suddenly the boy seemed to notice him, and after peering nervously at his father from under a hooded brow for a moment, hurriedly shuffled the datasheets that sat on the counter in front of him, bringing forth one marked out in various triangles and mathematical symbols and setting to work on the third problem on the page. 

Caar frowned. This at least he had some idea of the purpose of (it looked like trigonometry) , but he couldn't say it was a worthwhile use of his son's time, even a son such as Hego. 

"Now, surely you don't need to do _that_ \--" he began, but was interrupted by a whirr of panic from the kitchen droid and a sudden heady wave of that strange smell. 

"What, sir?" Hego asked brittlely, a little too reservedly for in front of his father. He turned then, to see the kitchen droid bring in a baking tray filled with small runny heaps of something vaguely orange in color, and frowned intently at it. "What's gone wrong now?" he muttered to himself.

"I shouldn't know! What are you doing?" the banker asked, shrill panic creeping into his voice. 

His son fixed him with an annoyed and incredulous look. "I'm trying to perfect the recipe for those small cakes Mother likes," he explained in a cold calm voice that seemed utterly out of place coming from the small Muun.

"What?!" Caar exclaimed. "You shouldn't be in the kitchen."

"Why not?" Hego retorted, far more calmly than he had a right to be. He poked curiously at one of the heaps on the baking sheet with one finger but pulled his hand away when he realized it was still very hot. "Did you follow the instructions?" he asked the droid.

"Yes, young master," the droid reported, its voice distorted by a malfunctioning vocorder. Caar made a mental note to make a note to have the droid repaired. And possibly reprogrammed not to take frivolous and potentially dangerous orders from his son.

"I must've done something..." Hego reflected, speaking mostly to himself. At this point the banker was finding his son's whole manner disconcerting. The father should be the calm one in this instance, not the son, and what _was_ Hego doing in the _kitchen_?! Instructing the droid to try to reproduce some delicacy his mother was fond of, that was foolishness! "How much liquid did you use?" he demanded.

"I did not use any liquid," the droid protested, the distorted voice grating on the Muuns' ears. "Your recipe called only for the use of two eggs, young master.

"Huh," Hego remarked, pulling out another datasheet from the pile, this with what was sort of recognizable as cooking instructions on it, and quite ignoring his father. There were several sets of a table that seemed to list ingredients. "Where did we go wrong?"

"My processers are not adequately equipped to answer that--" the droid began, before Caar commanded it to be silent.

"I was _sure_ that was the right conversion factor..." Hego pondered aloud. 

"What are you talking about?" Caar asked, his voice still a bit high with concern. 

"I had to translate the recipe," his son explained. "How much ...ah, fat?"

"What?!" Caar exclaimed, regarding his son with a baffled expression.

"You include cooking fats in baked goods for various purposes, according to the research I've done into the matter." Hego informed him. 

"You instructed me to use approximately two-hundred twenty five milliliters, young master," the droid answered belatedly, the lower part of its manipulator arm below the joint shuddering due to a problem with one of its parts. Caar amended his earlier mental note to look into that malfunction too and possibly see about having the droid replaced, if it was having so many problems and taking such silly orders from his son.

"That must be it!" the young Muun pronounced in tones of fierce epiphany. "Perhaps I've... Say, droid, what does this abbreviation extend to?"

"I wouldn't know," the droid said, its speech tending to excessively colloquial. Caar was _certain_ it was purely his imagination that it then noticed his frown at this observation causing it to amend in a more appropriate tone, "My memory banks do not include that information."

"Perhaps..." Hego mused contemplatively, glancing sharply at the droid. "Try again, measuring out a cooking spoon rather than a cup."

"I do not know what you mean, young master," the serving droid answered carefully. 

"It would be... ah, more like fifteen milliliters," Caar's son instructed. The droid trundled out of the kitchen into a darker room Caar had to assume was a pantry.

"Why are you using these units? Why are you in the kitchen, anyway?" Caar demanded.

Hego fixed him with a piercing gaze and a frown. "The droid is equipped to work in that system, and I've already informed you why I am in the kitchen, Father."

"That's hardly a worthwhile occupation for a young Muun!" the banker protested.

"What would be, then?" his son asked with perfect calm.

"Young master, I do hate to interrupt-rupt-rupt but we have run out of the variety of flour you instructed me to use," the droid noted, turning round and reentering the kitchen where its masters were gathered. Caar groaned inwardly at the gross vocorder malfunction.

"Order some more," Hego ordered imperiously, and Caar frowned at his impudence. "In fact, order some of those other types I suggested to see if we can get any closer. I don't think the normal one is the proper variety."

"Are you certain you should--?" Caar began, but he got no further because abruptly a loud noise rang through the kitchen. 

Hego sniffed and frowned at whatever he'd detected in the air. "Did you remove both trays from the oven?!" he demanded of the droid. 

"Nn-ooo" the droid said in a descending pitch that indicated even _worse_ malfunction. Belatedly Caar realized that the noise was the kitchen _fire_ alarm. 

"We must go," he directed shortly, "the fire supression system will soon activate."

"It's hardly necessary!" Hego retorted in irritation. "All that's happened is it's gotten too burnt and begun to smoke."

But said fire supression system did not heed the young Muun's protests and presently began to spray the inhabitants of the kitchen with water, a measure that did nothing whatsoever to stop or suppress the smoke emanating from the oven, which, as with Hego's accurate assessment, was merely the cakes that erroneously remained in the oven getting overcooked and not yet actually a fire. Too, it threatened to short out the already malfunctioning droid. Caar groaned and grabbed the upper portion of the droid's manipulator arm to tug it out of the kitchen, expecting his son to follow, as was the only sensible course of action in the face of a fire alarm.

Instead, Hego grabbed a towel from beside the washbasin and rushed over to the baking unit, flinging open its door and releasing yet more smoke into the kitchen. The young Muun seized the hot tray with the towel and abruptly dropped it onto the stove top, his frantic shaking of his hand and the fact that he made for the faucet with its cold water suggesting that he'd burnt his hand.

"What did you do that for?!" Caar exclaimed, ducking his head back into the kitchen, which was now filled with a simulated light rain from the fire suppression system (perhaps not the most effective delivery method for the water that might extinguish the fire?) and smoke that came off the baking tray as it sat on the stovetop. 

Still holding his hand as though it pained him, Hego ignored his father, instead regarding the baking tray, this one filled with black-carbonized lumps. Water from the sprinklers spattered into the pool of smoking fat on the ruined tray, sending up splutters of extremely hot oil towards both Muuns, and Caar cursed the fire suppression system's design mentally. Abruptly the steady artificial drizzle stopped, though the sources continued to drip on the floor, setting up an irregular pattern of noise as water droplets fell downward, and before he had time to think about what was wrong with that, a loud noise cut in, that of the exhaust fan above the cooktop operating at high speed.

"Did I do wrongly in swi-switching off the sprinklers and putting on the exhaust fan?" the droid inquired, eliciting a groan from Caar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost certainly to be continued...

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued...
> 
> (or is continued even the right word when what you've read takes place in the future of the story proper?)


End file.
